Giant Squid/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Tim and Moby are aboard an explorer's ship. Tim is wearing a captain's hat and holding a letter. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Moby, a giant squid is not going to pull us under. A giant squid's tentacle reaches out of the water and pulls Tim's hat from his head. TIM: Hey! Give me my hat back! MOBY: Beep. Beep. TIM: Oh, that's the best excuse you can come up with? Tim reads from the typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, Is a giant squid a real animal? If so, how giant is it? Yours truly, Dinah. TIM: Giant squids are real animals, all right. But because they're so hard to find, they're still pretty mysterious. In fact, the first documented sighting of a live giant squid happened only very recently, in 2004. An image shows a photograph of a giant squid. TIM: Before that, the only evidence for them were remains found on beaches and in whales' stomachs. But there were stories, too. Since sailors first started exploring the oceans thousands of years ago, they've told some pretty crazy tales of ferocious, tentacled sea monsters. An image shows a colonial sailor telling an animated story to two men. TIM: Many historians believe that the Scylla of Greek mythology and the Kraken of Norwegian legend could have been based on the giant squid. Side by side images show Scylla and the kraken coming out of the sea to attack sailing ships. Scylla looks like a snake with multiple heads, and the kraken looks like a gigantic squid or octopus. TIM: But in reality, a giant squid is just a, well, it's a very large squid that lives in the ocean, up to 1,000 meters down. An animation shows two giant squid in deep water beneath Tim and Moby's ship. One is wearing Tim's hat. The other squid laughs. TIM: Most species of squid are smaller than a meter long. But giant squid can grow up to thirteen meters. That's as big as a bus. An animation shows a 13-meter-long giant squid compared to a 1-meter-long regular squid and a city bus. TIM: And it has some of the largest eyes in the animal kingdom, about the size of a football. An animation shows a football hitting the giant squid near its eye, causing it to blink. TIM: Giant squids are mollusks, the group of spineless animals that includes regular squid, octopuses, clams, oysters, and snails. An image shows these animals. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, it's hard to believe that clams and snails could have anything in common with the giant squid, but they do. Like all mollusks, giant squid have a mantle, a protective layer of skin that covers the bulk of their body. An animation shows the mantle on a giant squid, surrounding the head, and on a snail, near the shell. TIM: Unlike other mollusks, though, the squid's mantle doesn't secrete a hard shell. For support, it relies on an internal, blade-like structure called a gladius. The animation shows the gladius on the giant squid. TIM: Giant squid have the muscular foot common to all mollusks, it's just divided up into two long tentacles and eight arms. The animation shows arrows pointing to the feet on the giant squid and snail. The tentacles and arms wiggle when Tim mentions them. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, they use their tentacles to catch prey, probably large fish and other squid. An animation shows a giant squid catching a fish with its two long tentacles. TIM: It helps that the tentacles are covered in hundreds of suction cups, each of which has a ring of teeth around its edge. Their eight arms are covered in suckers, too. An image shows the tentacles. A close-up image shows the rings of teeth in their suction cups. TIM: They hold their prey and bring it within biting range of the squid's ferocious, beak-like mouth. The animation shows the squid bringing the prey to its mouth. TIM: Chunks of food are passed over the radula, a tough tongue shared by many mollusks, and then into the esophagus. An animation shows how the food travels inside of the squid. Areas Tim describes are labeled. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Ah, don't be such a scaredy-cat. Giant squid aren't known to prey on people, or, or robots, all that often. And their only known predator is the sperm whale. Not only have scientists found squid beaks in whale stomachs, they've found marks on sperm whale skin from the suction cups of squid tentacles. An animation shows the sperm whale, which is shown to have suction cup marks on its skin. TIM: Because giant squid are so hard to find, scientists looking for them track sperm whales instead, following them on their hunt for food. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, unlike their smaller cousins, the giant squid's ink sacs are too small to be useful against predators. But, like most squid, they are able to change the color of their skin. An animation shows a giant squid face to face with a sperm whale. The giant squid squirts a little bit of ink and then changes its color to the sea's color. TIM: Giant squid move just like regular squid, too. Water inside the mantle is squeezed out through a tube called a siphon, pushing the squid forward like a jet engine. Or backward, if need be. An animation shows water from the squid's mantle pushed out of its siphon. Arrows point to the mantle and siphon. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yep, they're pretty amazing animals. MOBY: Beep. Moby points to the water. TIM: Hey, there's my hat! Tim's hat is floating in the water. Moby reaches down to get it and falls into the water. Moby emerges from the water on top of a giant squid. Moby and the squid go back in the water. Moby rides the squid and waves Tim's hat. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts